We’re facing some conflicting feelings when it comes to NCIS: Origins.
While it took Lala a minute to find her footing on the series, she eventually did. She’s been the beating heart of the team, often managing to challenge and hold her own against the men of NIS. And she’s done so in a time when navigating the testosterone-laden world was remarkably hard.
What’s stuck with us since the premiere is that this is the story of “her,” referring to Lala. And the season concluded with her in dire straits. But what’s next?
After watching NCIS: Origins Season 1 Episode 18, they knocked the wind out of us with a heartwrenching cliffhanger that saw our girl Lala Dominguez unconscious, hanging upside down in her car after a horrific accident.
And the ending, as it aligned with Gibbs’ voiceover, implied that she very well could be gone.
We’re not novice. Cliffhangers are the peak for series, especially on broadcast, where they actually mean something and matter. But upon watching the finale, it strongly felt as if Lala had signed off for good.
And that was something that left me genuinely conflicted, albeit it’s brutally and painfully realistic in the same vein.
Sometimes, when your time comes, that’s it. Most people have their lives cut short before their prime or when they still had so much left to give, do, see, or say.
It’s also baked into the very fabric of this franchise that Gibbs has one of the most traumatic lives in the entire NCIS Universe.
He and loss are old bedfellows and friends. Grief is so familiar to him that it has become ingrained in his personality.
And losing women that he cared for or loved is par for the course for this man.
Keeping all of that in mind, and given the themes of NCIS: Origins, which beautifully digs into the actual feelings and vulnerability of these seemingly hardened characters, losing Lala would wreck the characters and audience, but align with what we’d expect from this series.
Except, now, when it felt as if we were witnessing the tragic end of Lala’s story, it seems that maybe it wasn’t.
And that’s where I’m stuck. I genuinely grew to love Lala and what she brought to the series. Not to mention, I adore Mariel Molino. She was one of the many highlights of the tragically canceled Promised Land.
After the setup that NCIS: Origins established, I fear the only logical and reasonable path ahead is for Lala to truly be dead. Otherwise, where are we going here?
I don’t want to lose Lala, nor the talented actress who portrays her. Ideally, we could keep the character for many years to come.
However, one issue with the bittersweetness of a prequel is that we have some knowledge beforehand of how some of these stories will end or potentially could conclude.
The mere thought that Lala was the most pivotal woman in Gibbs’ life in the aftermath of losing his wife and daughter, but we never heard about her before now, speaks volumes.
It speaks to the type of profound loss that Gibbs didn’t want to ever share — something he alludes to in the series opener.
He loved her deeply, not just as a romantic possibility but as this anchor that kept him tethered during a time in his life where he could have taken the most tragic way out, as he drowned in his own grief.
Ironically, something horrific and tragic happening to Lala is exactly the kind of thing that would fuel him. It would propel him forward in his job, his approach to cases, and how he treats others.
Kelly and Shannon’s loss nearly broke Gibbs, had him barely functioning, and chipping away at his will to live.
But Lala’s death? It’s the type of thing where living and pursuing the job with the same passion she had, helping people with the same determination, would honor her and everything she was and represented.
Sure, the trope of killing off a female character to deepen a male character’s storyline can be problematic and frustrating at times.
But here? It’s a prime example of how it can work well. Because Lala’s death wouldn’t just be a plot device — it would be the foundation of an entire series, franchise even.
It shapes the course of everything we’ve come to know — an unexpected pressure point in a remarkable journey.
As the sophomore season approaches, it’s becoming murkier whether Lala will return to the series.
The actors and showrunners have leaned too heavily into playing coy about it for it to be meaningless.
Is there an avenue where Lala survived that terrifying crash? And if so, how would it change the dynamic of everything for the team and Gibbs?
Everything about their story thus far has the sentiment of “What might have been” hanging over them. Tragedy in the form of her sudden death and in such a seemingly senseless way would make so much sense.
We already know Lala Dominguez is a badass. It almost would have been easier to handle her dying in a firefight, succumbing to a hail of bullets in the field.
The woman who died swerving to avoid a kid and her dog after rushing to tell Gibbs the good news about the investigation, looking into him, and that she loves him?
Oh, that’s what makes her apparent death hurt so much (and so good).
But if instead we have some version of Lala we didn’t anticipate. Maybe the accident permanently disabled or disfigured her. Perhaps she’s unable to work with NIS again, in a coma, or any number of possibilities. It feels like it would delay the inevitable.
For Lala to have the type of life-altering effect on Gibbs, it feels like that can only come through death, sooner rather than later.
The talented writers of NCIS: Origins have a knack for crafting deeply powerful storytelling. They may have a legitimate and excellent way of writing themselves out of this particular corner.
I just can’t envision it.
As much as I love Lala Dominguez and her presence on this series, it feels like there’s only one way forward for her arc in this series — death.
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